The Frozen School

Chapter 9 (Michael)

"Are you sure the fan will be strong enough?" Daniel asks as we walk towards the library.

"Nope, but it's not like we have any other options, we are already lucky that it's battery powered and doesn't need to be plugged in." I say zipping up my outer jacket since the halls are much colder than being by the fire.

It doesn't take us long to get to the library and grab the fan. Hopefully this will be big and strong enough, it's about the size of a laptop so it should be able to do something. I just hope that it can at least suck out more smoke than the fire makes even if only barely.

"Help me check the drawers for batteries it takes D, but you never know when we might need spare batteries." I tell Daniel as we look through the drawers. "Nice! I found a couple of spares." I tell him excitedly after opening the last drawer in the desk.

"Good job, I only found double and triple A batteries." He calls back.

After searching those two desks we didn't find any more batteries or anything else really all that useful in the library, so we started heading to the maintenance room.

"Hey Michael, do you still have those keys?" Daniel asks as we get close to the maintenance room.

"Yeah, no worries I have them." I reply. It doesn't take us long to reach the maintenance room. "Looks like we wouldn't have even needed the key, the door's unlocked." I say opening it up.

The room is surprisingly well organized, with every cabinet labeled and everything is very clean and in its proper place. We quickly look around but don't find any ducting or anything similar, but we do find a couple rolls of duct tape which is always handy.

"Hey, could we use those walkie talkies?" I ask pointing them out to Daniel.

"Looks like they are rechargeable." He says checking the back of them. "Oh, wait, they look like they can use double A batteries, but we would need to find the backs for them if we don't want them to fall out."

Sadly, we don't find the backs to the walkie talkies, but we do find pvc pipe connectors, elbows, and intersections. "Do you think we could use pvc pipes to pump the smoke out." I say holding up the big connectors.

"Yeah that could work but where are the pipes?" He asks looking around the room.

"Probably outside they would take up too much room otherwise." I say as I move to the outside facing door in the room. Lo and behold the pipes are right outside piled up and half buried under a bunch of snow. "Why don't you put the connectors and walkie talkies in your bag and then we can carry two of these pipes back to the room and if we need any more we can drive the truck around to pick them up." I suggest closing the door and looking for a saw to cut the pipes with.

"Sounds good to me." Daniel says shoving everything in his backpack.

I quickly find the saw along with other miscellaneous tools and decide to take them all, quickly shoving them in my backpack with the fan. "Alright, you ready to grab the pipes?" I ask Daniel as I shoulder the backpack on.

"Yup, let's do it." He says as I open the door.

"Jeez these are freezing I think my fingers are going numb, I really need to find a pair of gloves." I say as we fast walk with the pipes back the garage.

"I'm surprised you haven't grabbed a pair yet we have a lot of extras with the jackets." He says back.

"I don't like the lack of mobility I have when wearing them, but I guess I could always just take them off when I don't need them." I say as we near the garage. We don't talk anymore since we are both starting to feel a bit breathless from our fast pace and heavy load.